DS Goddess
by Thor2000
Summary: Angelique encounters Ares and many of the gods of earth and must live by her wits to keep Ares from killing Barnabas and her children. Ares, meanwhile, restores Laura Murdoch to life.


PART ONE

Angelique smiled happily with Barnabas as they sat on the front veranda of the Old House and watched their children run loose in the front yard. Between the efforts of Willie Loomis and Chris Jennings, the front of the Old House had finally been completely restored to its full grandeur and it's interior partially modernized and increased to the level of a museum. The former sorceress rose with the former arrogance of the evil witch she no longer was and leaned on one of the front pillars as a proud mother while her daughter raced after her big brother.

"William, don't run so fast from Sara. She can't keep up." Barnabas called to the children.

"Angelique, I think I smell the roast." He turned to her.

"I'll be back." Her eyes widened a moment as she briefly kissed him. Entering the front foyer of the house, she was cooled immediately by the new air conditioner in the structure as she glided elegantly through the parlor, into the dining room and into the kitchen. Taking an oven mitt, she opened the oven with her uncovered hand and reached to pull out the pan with the roast with her covered hand, but it was gone!

"Josette? Jeremiah? What mischief is this??" She expected one of the regular ghosts of the estate playing with her, but she instead turned to a much different and more physical figure. He was taller than any one else she had ever known. He had a short black goatee and mustache and long dark hair and wore leather studded with bronze studs and decor. Holding the burning pan with the roast in his unprotected hand, he pulled small slivers of meat off with his other hand and slipped them through his lips.

"Who are you?" she demanded to know.

"Why are you wasting your time in these meager surroundings playing nursemaid when you could use your powers to control others?" he spoke with an over-bearing sense of superiority and charisma.

"I'm that person anymore! Who are you?" Angelique demanded to know as her stranger put down the pan and roast and seductively came closer to her. His presence was powerful. He was too powerful to be human, but he could not be any of the dark creatures she once tapped for power as a dark sorceress. He wiggled the fingers on his right hand a moment and then jerked his fist in a grand gesture. In one flash of light, they both vanished!

PART TWO

The flash had totally wiped out Angelique as she woke up in her clothes under satin sheets and velvet covered feather pillows. Thinking first she might have been violated, she clutched her heart and checked her dress. Spread out around from her was a very regal bedchamber and another person she had never seen before was guarding her. This time it was a short attractive young woman. She had long midnight black hair, piercing blue eyes and white alabaster skin. She looked like she was no more than eighteen in her outfit of leather straps and cowhide.

"Who are you? Where am I?" Angelique stood at least five inches over her.

"Just sit down and shut up." her captor was obviously impatient. "He'll get back to you."

"Maybe I won't be here," Angelique picked up a wooden figure and took a strap off the glove of the young lady. Barely resisting, the young woman watched intrigued and unimpressed as Angelique tied the strap around the neck of the figure.

"You cannot breath, you may not resist my power." Her eyes returned to their former evil. The young lady rolled her eyes amusingly and then chuckled in bemusement. She made a brief choking noise then faked some coughs and started to pretend gagging. Somehow, Angelique realized her power didn't work on this one. Realizing she was being mocked, she removed the strap altogether as he opponent pretended to plead for air. Seeing the strap off the figure, her female guard stood up straight and took it away.

"If you're through playing with my toys...."

"Discord!" Angelique's kidnapper appeared in a doorway. "See to our guests! I'll take care of her."

"Ares, god of war, I presume." Angelique finally guessed as the war-god posed cockily and arrogantly. Everything started making sense. The opulent surroundings, her spells not working here and then it was the mere name of the young goddess that was once guarding her. Discord went out of the room distractedly as her brother the war-god hovered over his beautiful female prisoner.

"Awww, was I that obvious?" The obnoxious son of Zeus came up to her and looked her over. "Care for a Mars bar?"

"No, thank you."

"I love these things." Ares stuffed the uncovered chocolate bar in his mouth and chewed it a few seconds as he swallowed it. "You know, with all the things taking the names of immortals nowadays: planets, shoes, automobiles, cartoon characters; this I can forgive. Now my little Wiccan fantasy, how would you like to be a god?"

"Not interested."

"Hear me out before you make a stupid choice like that." Ares caressed her long golden locks as he tried to tempt her. "Help me to overthrow my father and the heads of the other fourteen pantheons, and I'll make you my queen."

"I just happen to be married with two beautiful little children........."

"I will kill your husband and your kids if you don't support me." Ares peered seductively into her eyes. "I will kill everyone you love until you follow me!"

"But why me?" Angelique's heart froze. "Why not Discord or..."

"Paganism is coming back." Ares revealed. "I have enough loyal followers on Earth to take us back to the good times before you mortals became obsessed with… civilization and inventing things, but I need someone I can trust." He whispered charismatically in her ear. "And control..." He pulled away as he started to leave her alone.

"I'll give you one hour to consider it." He moved out of the room. "And don't try to go out the window. It's a long way down the Areopagus..."

PART THREE

Angelique froze at the decision. Watch her family killed or allow millions to die? It was a death sentence either way. She couldn't be sure how much of a threat he really was or what he really wanted, but she did know she did not want to be here. She started to follow Ares out then ducked back as she saw him with some of the more dangerous immortals of the cosmos. The figure in emerald and gold was Loki, the Scandinavian trickster. Across from him, the six armed and violet-skinned deity wearing a skull belt was the Hindu deity Shiva mulling over his own desires. The skull-faced entity in the armor was the Aztec death-god Ahpuch and the African-American wearing snakeskins and a serpent crown was Damballah of Haitian Voodoo. Altogether, they were supposed to be five of the most dangerous immortals from Bullfinch's Mythology!

"You have...." Discord hid behind the pillar across from her. "Fifty minutes to give my brother the answer he wants to hear."

Realizing she was far out of her element, Angelique's eyes went wide as she realized she was not on Earth anymore and far out of her league. On Earth, the Areopagus was a small hill in Greece where the war-god had been born. This mountain fortress, however, probably was located in a range connecting the celestial realm of Olympus with other immortal realms. Her powers probably wouldn't work in this dimension away from Mother Earth and she was not about to go back to start calling on creatures as Diabolos or even Beelzebub. She went back to the bedchambers and looked around for something to help her. Eyeing the window, she looked down over a sheer mountainside. There were absolutely no crevasses she could step on to climb down to the bottom. More than a hundred feet down, she eyed the raging course of the great river Oceanus.

"Great Titan," she crawled out on the ledge. "Protect me!" She crawled out the window hoping he heard her and jumped from the ledge.

PART FOUR

She felt the rush of air as she soared back down to earth. She was never afraid of heights, but the freefall down to Oceanus was growing faster and faster as she turned herself around and braced for a water landing. Below her, the river course stopped and splashed on itself as water current upon water current clashed. The two momentums of water started spiraling into a whirlpool, but instead of emptying into a deeper underwater cavern, it exploded skyward into a geyser. Angelique felt the soft spray of water slowing her ascent and then the mild embrace as she rode the geyser back down and joined the returning current of water. As she struggled for air, a violent blast came near her from a rising log. It was a huge mighty oak of some sort, hollowed out as some sort of natural canoe as she climbed into it and huddled in safety knowing Ares would not come after her as she was in the Titan's protection.

"YOU LET HER GET AWAY?!!" A temperamental blast of lightning blasted Discord across Ares' main hall hard enough that Xena's portrait crashed to the floor. "When I get through with you the only thing you'll be able to say is 'paper or plastic?' " Ares shouted as he was briefly spooked by Ahpuch's eyeless skeletal face. It unnerved him every time. The Mexican immortal looked rather normal in his true form, but it was this form in which he often appeared.

"What are you going to do about this, Olympian?" Shiva's six arms folded simultaneously. "And don't try ordering me around. I'm still powerful enough to send you into your next life."

"We have invested a lot in your promise to deliver!" Loki added as the five of them all started bickering.

"Everybody shut up!" Ares scowled as he pushed the Aztec god of the dead out of his way. "We proceed as planned. Deimos! Phobos!"

"Yes, father," The gods of fear and terror appeared out of light and scant traces of smoke.

"Bring that witch back here!" Ares ordered his boys. "And make sure your mother doesn't find out about this, boys. She's got a soft spot for humans."

PART FIVE

Ares brooded on his throne at the Areopagus as he waited for his ace in the hole. A waft of black smoke filled his hall as the black-skinned Kali of the Hindu gods appeared in his presence. Garbed in very little except a garland of bloody skulls and a mere sash, she presented a dull gray piece of charcoal to the war god.

"Don't ever send me to the Egyptian underworld again!" she spoke with a shrill, psychotic little voice. "I almost didn't get out alive."

"Not my problem." Ares took the rock from her and tossed it into his fire pit in the center of the hall. "Is this the right one?"

"It better be." Kali watched the blaze explode. "Hers wasn't the only heart down there."

The fire the rock produced only ignited and increased the flame in the pit. The flickering lights of yellow, orange and red created shapes as the shape of a fiery presence was born from the flames. It changed from a fiery demon and then into a naked female woman as the flames fell away and revealed human skin. Another sudden burst, and the flames created a white dress for their creation.

"Who are you people?" she commanded. "Why have you brought me back now? It's too early!!!"

"Two words." Ares replied. "Angelique Collins."

"Angelique!" the woman screamed as she stepped out of the flames. "She took my children from me!!"

"How would you like to get even?" Ares tempted her. "I could make you a true immortal if you join me."

"Who is this creature, Olympian?" Kali spoke up.

"My second line of defense." Ares admitted. "The Phoenix Laura Murdoch!!"

PART SIX

Further down river, the log carrying Angelique had drifted into a beautiful yet serene marsh. She knew she was not home as ten to twelve water divinities splashed and played at the water's edge only to be chased from shore by centaurs. Screaming and squealing for their underwater father, they all vanished under the water's edge as Angelique hoped the half-man horses did  
not see her.

Her log hit shallow water as she looked up and saw a satyr munching on the berries growing from the tree branch he was sitting on. The two of them locked eyes as he stopped chewing and raised an eyebrow in a disgusting love-starved manner.

"Hey! There's a mortal here!" he screamed jumping down to the log.

"She's mine!!" another one screamed as Angelique bolted up, jumped on to shore and ran for her life. She had read fairy tales of how satyrs raped mortal women in mass debaucheries. What was a nice former witch doing here in the land of the immortals?

Without looking back, she raced through a field of faeries and field nymphs as five then eight satyrs rushed for a touch of her mortal skin. Another one jumped from a tree on his hind legs of a goat. She ran into a grotto with huge centaurs and froze as the massive male blared out their mating call.

"Oh great!" she recognized an herb and a vine she could use. Hoping their properties were greater in this world, she squeezed the herb into the juice from the vine and rubbed her impromptu elixir into a strong branch. As she ran into a dry riverbed, she started drawing a circle around herself with her impromptu wand. With the small patch of enchanted ground, she looked up as her pursuers caught up, froze in fright at something and then retreated. That was rather odd. They were so desperate to grab her that they would not fight through her protection spell?

"Why would they do that?" she asked herself as she heard ground being crushed behind her. Turning around, she saw a huge crocodile head. Actually it looked like one of her son's toy dinosaurs as it stood up on its rear legs and reached out for her. Angelique just started to turn round as its fingers curled around her starting to flee.

"Well, there's something you don't see everyday." It blinked and spoke clear English. "A mortal witch on the plain of Olympus. You're not in Kansas anymore are you, Dorothy?"

PART SEVEN

"Argos, give her to me." The Aztec god spoke to the young dragon.

"Quetzacoatl, please let me keep the pretty human," the mighty beast bemoaned. "I never get to see many except when I swim at Loch Ness."

"You know better." The feathered immortal was one of a few ambassadors between immortal and dragon. The honored beast recanted as he reached into a cave next to his mound and carefully pulled out his attractive guest from his hiding place. Placing Angelique back down to the ground, his mighty scaly finger caressed her back a minute as she looked up.

"Come back and visit." the dragon blushed.

"Finally, someone I can talk to." Angelique smiled. "I thought I was going to have to wait for King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table to rescue me."

"Arthur's dead." the Aztec immortal revealed. "You need to see someone."

"No, I don't." Angelique fretted and primped herself clean. "I have a husband and two kids wondering where I am."

"Don't make me do this beyond your will."

"What do you mean by that?" Angelique asked just as her guide raised his staff and struck the ground. In another flash, she was passing through worlds again.

PART EIGHT

Angelique woke again this time cleaned and adorned in different clothes. The clothes were extravagant and vaguely German as the young ladies attending her rushed from the room. In their path, she recognized the huge blonde immortal who smiled before her. She had known him before.

"Thor!" she beamed. It had been years since their meeting as she hugged him and he kissed her platonically. It had been years since he had rescued her from the deck of the Titanic.

"Love the kids." He seemed more like an old friend as she realized she was now in the halls of Asgard. In the doorway stood his father Odin and Zeus of Olympus. The Aztec immortal Quetzalcoatl and the Anasazi lord Manabozho stood before her as well. Angelique uncontrollably fell to her knees in their presence realizing to whom she was standing before.

"This is not the time." Odin picked her up.

"Please send me home." she asked.

"We can't." Zeus disclosed. "We can protect you better here. It's also imperative that we keep you away from my ill-begotten son."

"Why do you need me?" Angelique inquired. "Can't you deal with this war without me?"

"Ares is always at war. " Quetzalcoatl revealed. "It's his nature. Angelique, Shiva humors him all the time. Ahpuch and Damballah aren't even interested in returning back to being gods, and Loki shows up just for appearances sake. They keep him from going too far, but now he's starting to use other neo-pagans like yourself to break the balance, and that in itself could inevitably reveal that we exist."

"You mean," Angelique started realizing them more on terms as human beings than the religious figures they once were. "This is all one big bluff? He's fighting a war that doesn't even exist?"

"Ares liked being a god." Zeus treated himself to some Asgardian liquor. "Being an immortal pretending to be mortal never had any appeal to him. Gods retire, but being an immortal is forever."

"You need things to care about." Angelique understood. "Existing without a purpose must be unforgiving."

"Exactly." Manabozho was dressed in the garb of his Native American worshippers. A headdress of feathers on his head, he sensed something and lifted his bow and one arrow to fire at one of two crows sitting in the rafters listening to them. His mark was reliable and unfailing as one spread its wings and fell from its perch. The other screeched and flew off as its brother fell to the floor. Instead of finding a dead crow, Manabozho reached down and lifted the young god it had transformed back into.

"Deimos!" Zeus raged at his grandson. "Ares will suffer greatly for this!"

"He was sent to kill you." Thor whispered to Angelique.

"No!" the young god pulled the arrow from his chest as he staggered to rest on a long comforter. "I was merely sent to retrieve her."

"You are a lousy liar." Quetzalcoatl heaved the miscreant back up.

"What of me?" Angelique forgot she was in a room of gods. "Ares swore kill my husband and children unless he gets me."

"Your family and all you love are under the divine protection of Infinity as long as you are here." Odin turned to her. "He has greater powers than all the immortals in the cosmos."

"He does?"

"Sure." Thor revealed as he prepared to drag off Deimos. "Didn't his son die on a cross in Jerusalem for your sins."

PART NINE

Angelique was stunned to discover that even the immortals believed in the Christian God. Thor admitted to have being Christianized by King Arthur. He had even gone on to remark that Apollo, Brigid, Hermes and many of the former gods had bowed to the greater power by admitting that Jesus Christ was the son of a higher guiding force for good. It made sense to her as she sat in their church. They lived on earth in ancient times and pretended to be mortal, but then using their powers to teach and school ancient man, they became worshipped as deities they never wanted to be. Such a power over immortals must have caused many of then to become corrupted and drunk with power. Polytheism was an accident. Apparently the immortals knew there was one true guiding force all along, and they were actually more than willing to surrender to him. The Norse called him Gimle, and the ancient Egyptians named him Aton and the Olympians called him Infinity. The Mesopotamians knew him as Yahweh, but then they had finally come to acknowledge that the Jewish faith had been born from their pagan worship and traces of ideas from Egypt and an all spirit called Aton. To the Asgardians, his name was Gimle; to the Olympians, he was Infinity and to the Mesopotamians he was Yahweh. Angelique's thoughts drifted back to her children and Barnabas down on Earth from this plane of existence. She wished she could contact them as she found herself praying to God for the first time in her life.

"Mommy!" She heard William's voice! Spinning around, she half-heartedly expected to see Barnabas, William and Sara run to meet her, but this Asgardian church was empty.

"Mommy!" That was the voice of her daughter.

"Sara!" She ran from where she was told to stay. The voices were coming from somewhere and they were real! She rushed across a great hall, lifting her long skirt to keep from tripping on it.

"Mommy! Help us!" Their tiny screams were coming from behind the wall! Touching it, she felt the heat wafting up from one of the underworlds. Ares had done it! He had committed her children to the underworld! "I'm coming babies!!" She pounded at the wall as it gave way. Opening up, she started to stumble forward to the floorless pit. At the end of the hall, Thor turned toward the church and then toward her.

"Angelique! Don't go! It's a trick!" Thor saw her and rushed to grab her, but it was too late. The lovely sorceress his mother had once asked him protect was falling to the underworld!

PART TEN

Tumbling through inky darkness, Angelique felt herself sliding and falling through slanted and descending tunnels. Feeling space, she felt the heat increasing as small fires lit her way. She was suddenly airborne. She flew over a tepid lake in an underground cavern and landed with a splash in five feet of water on the bank of an immense underground domain.

"I don't like this place anymore." She mumbled as she dragged herself out of the water. "William! Sara! Babies!!!"

She heard shuffling sounds from beyond her as she looked up and saw what looked like a group of people, but as they drew closer, she noticed they were something between ghosts and the walking dead. Trapped in various stages of decomposition, these unearthly beings looked solid from the waist or whatever up, but were floating around on transparent legs and skirts.

Whirling around, Angelique noticed similar beings emerging from the lake and from smoke-filled caves. She almost attempted to see if her spells would work here then ran through the only blocked path. Why did she feel she was in a horror movie?!

The moaning and groaning sounds of the walking dead were coming from everywhere. From somewhere she heard barking from three dogs. That would be Cerberus, the watchdog from the underworld. That proved to her she was in Hades and not the frozen Norse underworld. She had been tricked as Thor said. Ares had her where he wanted her again!

"Angelique, over here!" A small female voice called to her. It wasn't Discord's arrogant voice either. This voice was weaker and failing like that of an old woman. She fled to the direction of the small hooded figure, which had called to her and hid with it in a tiny apartment in the outside wall of the Castle of Hades.

"Clara?" Angelique had not seen this witch since she was a child. The petite blonde sorceress still had the scar of decapitation across her neck, but was living as a minor soothsayer for modern-day heroes who visited her. "What are you doing…"

"I can't believe you married Isaac's great-grandson." the former witch saw the little girl Angelique used to be. "That vampire curse...beautiful! Dream curse, I wish I had thought of it."

"Clara?" She had seen this witch before in the Seventeenth Century. She had been her friend and almost a foster mother before Hester Bouchard adopted her.

"Hades used me as a mistress for a while." The young witch still looked the same the day she died. A disgusting green dripping scar marked where her head had been severed from her shoulders. Vaguely attractive, her beauty had been damaged by a semblance of deterioration to her spirit form. "Kept promising to make me an immortal - never delivered." She continued.

"Where are my children?"

"Back on Earth obviously." Clara sat back against the wall. "Ares is jerking you around the same way Hades did me. I can't believe how lovely you became."

"Clara, please!"

"Ares has an agenda Zeus is not aware of." Clara revealed. "He's using the recent new age movement on Earth to push for re-revealing the immortals to mortals, and trust me, humanity is not ready for the truth yet!"

"How do I get home to my children?"

"You have to defeat Ares on your own." Clara smiled the evil little spell, which Angelique remembered. "And to do that, you will have to become immortal."

"An immortal!!" Angelique sat down. "But how could I do that with possibly every sort of war and death god looking for me?!"

"Not all the gods of the underworld support Ares." Clara shook her finger before Angelique. "Tuonetar, the old Finnish goddess hates Ares and Hades both. She will do anything to get back at........." Clara stopped in mid-sentence. Three hundred years of living in the underworld had fine-tuned her senses to detect all sorts of beings and entities traveling in and out of the underworld. "Run!"

The two of them charged from the tiny room just as a huge fireball incinerated the interior and its contents. Clara dragged her former student down a long passageway and into a long crampt tunnel. Crawling on all fours, Angelique looked back and felt the back draft of another fireball coming straight after her. Coming into a small chamber partially submerged in water, she just managed to roll out of the way of being barbecued alive.

"You'll have to swim for it." Clara told her. "I can't go with you either."

"But..."

"All the underworlds of the gods are interconnected." Clara explained. "Dive as deep as you can and swim through the channel. It will empty into Tuonela, the Finnish underworld."

"Thank you." Angelique took a deep breath of hot air tasting of brimstone and dived. She swam as deep as she could and looked for the underwater route she was told, but then a sudden current grabbed her and she pulled down twenty feet of another tunnel. Fighting for air, she rose into a fountain of a great hall. Was this it?

"Hello, Angelique." a female voice said. "I've been waiting for you." Angelique turned to the voice. It was from a short blonde in a metal gold bustier with a white cape and skirt. Her sleeves and boots were of gold leather.

"Laura!!!" Angelique screamed as Laura drove her hands into the water and had it boiling in minutes!!!!

PART ELEVEN

Angelique had thrown herself to the cold stone floor. Her left leg had been seared - burnt by the water being heated to a hundred degrees. It was a burning bright red as she looked briefly up to Laura standing over her.

"What's the matter, Angelique?" Laura looked down on her. "Burn yourself? Let me make you better!!" Laura threw another massive fireball just as Angelique rose on one good leg and dived behind another fountain. What was going on? How did Laura get to be so powerful?

"What are you doing?" Ares teleported himself into the hall and glared back at her. "I told you to capture her! Not kill her!!!"

"Something I forgot to tell you, Ares...." Laura looked at him. "I don't take orders from anyone!"

Angelique turned her head up as she watched Ares fly over her head, crash into the wall and fall into a smoldering pile of burnt leather just a few feet from her.

"Let me guess..." she looked at him. "You made her a god?"

"If you had said yes when I offered it to you," Ares crawled closer to her. "We would not be in this mess with that psychotic witch!!"

He leaped up and threw several lightning bolts as he dodged several fireballs. Without watching, Angelique heard Laura scream as Ares turned and lifted her up and teleported the two of them out of the hall. Angelique slightly swooned as the teleportation spell caused her surroundings to change around her. The huge hall with fountains changed to the catacombs under Asgard as the short jaunt proved that Ares was not up to his full power.

"Tell me the truth, you big idiot!" Angelique yelled at the wounded war-god. "Why did you really kidnap me?!! You're not really at war, are you? And you couldn't possibly dare killing my family because of the consequences that it would incur back on you. Just why did you drag me into this stupid ordeal!"

"Because I love you!" Ares admitted. "Most of the greatest heroes - Hercules, Theseus, Perseus were born from a god and a mortal! You were the only mortal I knew in the last hundred years with significant mystical potential, but then that harpy went and ruined everything!!!" He looked upon her abashedly. "I only cared for one other mortal woman and she gave up her mortal life to save others. I thought you could have loved me where Xena didn't."

Angelique didn't know what to say as Thor stood listening. No one threatened harm on his mortal descendants and he wasn't interested in having Ares among those relatives. Charged forward, he lifted his enchanted uru hammer and struck the war-god hard enough to send him flying several feet.

"Angelique, get out of here." he ordered her. "I'll deal with him."

Before the former witch could say a thing, a lightning bolt flew over her head just as Discord appeared to rescue her brother. It was a perfect opportunity for her to close several feuds with the thunder-god. Behind her, Quetzalcoatl appeared to help Thor, and then Loki appeared to shift the tide. Angelique watched stunned to see these eternal feuds carrying on before her. A stray blast of mystical force hit an arch over her head and she dropped fearing its collapse on top of her then recognized Hercules himself as he caught it.

"Up the stairs!" He pointed the way as Angelique rushed up and skidded to a stop. Dashing out of the way, she left him to their immortal squabbles wondering where their parents were to separate them. A burst of heat preceded her as Laura appeared in her path.

"Forget about me?" She asked as she conjured a ball of flame and threw it like a baseball toward her eternal nemesis. Angelique threw herself through an open doorway into some type of armory. She eyed the numerous spears, hammers, swords and daggers as she looked for a tank. She gripped a small hammer with a large head to defend herself. Ignoring the inscription on it, she attempted to strike Laura with it.

"Stop swinging the hammer, Angelique." Laura warned her as she advanced. "Let me burn you at a stake like the nasty little witch you are."

"Laura," Angelique threatened her with the hammer. "I might not be able to hurt immortals, but I am still more than a match for you."

"I don't think so, Angelique." Laura came closer. "Are you forgetting what I am now?"

"You tried to kill your children as a sacrifice to Ra!" Angelique backed to the wall realizing she was trapped. "I know you tried to do the same to David before I came to Collinwood! How can you live with that?!"

"Tell me something, Angelique," Laura partially acknowledged the logic being thrown at her. "How many times have you died by fire?"

"NO!" Angelique waved the hammer again blindly as she backed away from the fireball burning in Laura's palm. She swung the hammer once again in her futile attempt to scare her, but Laura was obviously not intimidated. Clenching the short handle and swinging harder, Angelique inadvertently hit the wall and the mystical power contained in the hammer exploded on contact. The exploding thunder burst Laura felt tossed her out of the room and into the opposite wall across the hall outside the storeroom. If it could toss her several feet, what could it have done to that witch?!

"Uhhhh…" Laura landed on her back and lifted herself up. "What was that?!" she asked picking herself up. Looking back up, she noticed standing above her Angelique was now taller with longer blonde hair and in now Valkyrie arraignment.

"Let's try this again..." she smiled, swung the hammer in a circle on her hand and grinned as she hadn't in such a long time. Things were even now as thunder bursts met sunbursts and a great hall resonated with another battle. A floor below, Loki tossed his own brand of fireballs at Hercules as the lion of Olympus swung a marble pillar like a baseball bat. Quetzalcoatl fired arrows of mystical force at Ares and Discord. In the midst of it all, Thor cocked his head at the sounds of thunder from upstairs. He wasn't making those noises. Where were they coming from?

"Who's fighting upstairs?" He asked out loud. Without warning, the entire ceiling came down upon them and Discord made a look of fear. In Valkyrie armor, Angelique smashed a hammer into the deified Phoenix's back.

"Oh, crap," Discord had a brief sign of the truth. "She's immortal now." She vanished than face the deified Wiccan. Ares ducked from being squashed as his Aztec opponent held his arrow at the ready. Through the dust and debris, Thor noticed one figure pummeling another, heard someone screaming and then the visage of a female immortal flying backward from the blunt end of a hammer.

"A thousand American dollars on Angelique!" Ares screamed as his brother Hercules knocked him aside.

"Angelique?" Thor mustered a brief grin of amusement. He realized she must have found the armory of the Valkyrior as she continued pushing off the immortalized Phoenix further and further back into a burning pyre in the next chamber.

"Oh, baby..." Ares grinned a little grin as Angelique struck one more blow. In three seconds, the holy flames had once more reduced Laura to a desiccated husk and her stony heart into a rock. Standing above her foe, Angelique watched as the immortal flames burned off the body of the Phoenix and Laura's soul returned to her ashen sleep.

"You were incredible." Ares smiled as he moved the longer strands of Angelique's gold hair out of her eyes. He obviously wasn't paying attention as she punched him in the gut with her new toy.

"You ever touch me again, and there will never be enough of you to bury!" Her glare was almost war-like itself but vehemently hostile. Ares doubled up in the fetal position as the heroes looked down on him.

PART TWELVE

Thor's blue eyes scanned the crowd as Hercules and his father discussed Ares's punishment. Odin often invited immortals from across their cosmology to celebrate in their festivals. Forsaking mortal roles, beautiful Aphrodite escaped from her supermodel identity and the African deity Ananse arrived to take pledges for suffering Ethiopians. Apollo shared a rock and roll ballad with the beautiful Japanese goddess Benten and Horus the Egyptian sun god looked out for his wife before romancing a faerie from the world of the Russian gods. Delicately pushing free of another long winded conversation with Marduk or a sexual proposition from Pele, Thor walked out on to the patio were Angelique reclined back and looked at the Asgardian stars. Next to her, she chatted with Circe and Suonetar about love and magic.

"Ladies, if you'll excuse me." He intruded on the conversation. Suonetar stood arching her ample cleavage forward and Circe sipped her drink fleetingly. A hammer on her belt, Angelique pranced up eagerly to see him.

"Odinson," Angelique had been slowly forgetting her mortal life. "When is our next adventure?" She smiled and beamed as if they were old lovers. He briefly accepted her kiss as a friend.

"Angelique," he quietly removed the hammer hanging from the belt on her armor. "You have a husband and children who love you. " She took a minute to remember.

"I...I do. I do, don't I?" she became worried. "How could I have forgotten them?"

"Immortality often comes with a price." Odin came behind her. "And your future adventures are mortal ones. It's time to go home."

"Home..." Angelique hid a little grin. She was starting to love being immortal so much. "Do you have to take away all my memories again?"

"It's necessary." Odin had led her to a hall in the far wall.

"Can you at least make sure Clara finally gets a peaceful afterlife?" she asked.

"I'll see to it." Thor told her. "Hades owes me a favor or two."

Angelique heard children's voices at the end of the hall. She turned and saw the transparent images of William and Sara running loose on the estate of Collinwood giggling happily. She then saw herself and Barnabas as the transparent, over-lapping images came closer and closer. The hall of Asgard aligned with the kitchen of her home as she returned to home a mere few seconds after she had left. She remembered the route she took through the house for the kitchen and then reaching into the oven to find emptiness.

"Josette? Jeremiah? What mischief is this?" she looked around her kitchen and found her roast on the table. Someone had been picking at it too!

"Living in a haunted house..." she mumbled under breath as Barnabas carried in their daughter Sara.

"William ran off to be with Jamison." He revealed as Sara reached out to her mommy. Angelique could only grin and similarly reach out to her little girl. Kissing the little moppet, Barnabas chuckled as Willie came to the back door of the Old house and stood on the mud porch.

"Barnabas," the former caretaker had started putting on weight as his responsibilities at Collins Enterprises and as a father himself weighed on him. "This is the new hand I hired to mow the grounds, Ares Zeusson." Seeing the grimy unshaven figure in blue jeans and a soiled plaid shirt sparked memories Angelique didn't know she had.

"Have we met before, Mr. Zeusson?" Angelique raised a curious eyebrow as a twinge of a forgotten memory returned to her.

"No, ma'am." Zeusson responded. "Just passing through..." The would-be groundskeeper secretly eyed her figure as he fretted over his temporary mortal situation.

END


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